Sanitary napkins used to collect vaginal discharges are well known in the art. Individually packaged sanitary napkins are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,973,567 issued to Srinivasan, et al. on Aug. 10, 1976; U.S. Pat. No. 4,917,675 issued to Taylor, et al. on Apr. 17, 1990, European Patent Application Publication No. 0357000 A1 published in the name of Umesh on Mar. 7, 1990, and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,556,146 issued Dec. 3, 1985, to Swanson et al. The Swanson, et al. patent discloses a trifolded wrapper which packages a sanitary napkin, covers adhesive on the outwardly oriented face of the backsheet, and may be used for disposing of the used sanitary napkin.
Other trifolded arrangements are known, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,604,423 issued Sep. 14, 1971 to Fraser and in International Publication WO 89/02728 published Apr. 6, 1989 in the name of Froidh et al. However, these latter two teachings suffer from the drawback that conveniently removable packaging used in conjunction with a small individually packaged sanitary napkin is not taught.
Discarding used sanitary napkins enveloped in the packaging is also taught in the art. For example, International Publication WO 89/02729 published Apr. 6, 1989 in the name of Pigneul and U.S. Pat. No. 4,608,047 issued Aug. 26, 1986 to Mattingly disclose two packaging arrangements suitable for this purpose.
The search for improved individual package configurations for sanitary napkins has, however, continued.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide an individually packaged sanitary napkin. It is further an object of this invention to provide an individually packaged sanitary napkin which is easy for the user to open. It is also an object of this invention to provide an individually packaged sanitary napkin with packaging that protects exposed adhesive prior to the first use by the wearer. It is also an object of this invention to provide an individually packaged sanitary napkin having packaging which may be used for disposal of a used product. Finally, it is an object of this invention to provide improved closure mechanisms for maintaining the package in a closed configuration for disposal.